Specifications

Bump-Draft
Having said that, however, there are some changes we can make right away that should give us
a few extra tenths wi
thout spending hours in the garage. The reason for this is—as every rookie
w
uch as I would have liked; it didn’t
‘ro
he wedge in the lower middle portion of the screen. I am going to adjust it to negative 2,
an
r this, as it is a staple to every single setup change you will ever
m
e car is behaving—
be
. You will also note a thin green
ba
the right rear tire is heating, relative to the others, as we drive
th
more effort, physical and mental, was required to get the car around due to the
ne
ill have discovered through the ages of motor sport—setups given to the ‘newbie’ are always
‘stable’. And stable is never the quickest way of going racing.
For this particular exercise, I found the car to be a bit on the ‘tight’ side, or, in other words, the
front end of the car did not respond to my steering inputs as m
ll’ through the corner, and throttle modulation was required—as in get off the throttle—in
order to bring the nose back in line before I hit the outside wall. This is clearly not ideal since time
spent off the throttle is time wasted; in an ideal world, you want to have your foot on the throttle
for the longest period of time as you can on a lap. To tackle this, I have chosen to remove one
round of wedge, or cross weight, from the chassis of the car. This will have the effect of putting
less weight on the front right tire, thereby reducing the ‘plowing’ effect of a tight car. In theory,
that is!
Hit the ‘Garage 2’ tab, and among the many settings found here, you will see the setting to
adjust t
d see where that leads. Remember—removing wedge will have a tendency to make the car
loose, or, susceptible to spinning out at the rear, and adding wedge will tighten the car up, or,
making it less likely to spin at the rear, but susceptible to a poor turning radius as the front will
slide along the direction of travel as opposed to following the steering inputs. In other words; less
wedge will cause the rear to try and catch up with the front; more wedge will mean the car will be
more stable, but less able to turn.
Our wedge adjustment made, it’s time to hit the track again. And just a note to the rookie, and
you’d be well-advised to remembe
ake in your racing career, virtual or real: One setup change at a time! Don’t mess with more than
one setting at a time, because setup building is about two things—making the change, and
testing the result. More than one change will mean you will have no idea which has caused what
effect when you’re out on the track, and going the wrong way—setup-wise—is a frustrating
process that won’t win you any applause from your fans—or your mechanics!
Now that you’re on the track, we’re going to be rather more exacting with our testing: We are
going to have a look at some Real-Time data feedback to get an idea of how th
fore and after the tires come to temperature. Before leaving the garage, hit the ‘6’ key on the
keyboard, and then cycle through the various LCD pages until you come to the tire monitor page.
This page of the LCD will show you the condition and temperature of your tires, as well as your
fuel load and estimated amount of laps you can run on that load.
As you make your way down pit road and onto the track, you will notice all the tire indicators
are blue, indicating fresh tires with no temperature in them at all
r next to each tire icon; this is an indication of the overall tire wear, and the length of this bar—
as well as the color—will let you know just how ragged and worn the tires are. Sometimes, the
fuel will last a lot longer than the tires, so make sure you learn the tire wear characteristics at each
track for that extra bit of an edge.
You will quickly notice how our wedge adjustment has affected the car, at least in terms of tire
temperature. Observe how quickly
rough the corners. That is the effect of our wedge adjustment, since we have placed more of a
burden on the right rear tire in terms of chassis weight loading, and the heating rate difference in
this tire versus the others lets us know that, as we make our way through these corners, we are
riding quite a bit on that one tire. And we will notice something else as well—the rear-end has
suddenly become a lot more active; that is, noticeably less ‘sticky’ than the default setup,
requiring some on-the-fly adjustments of driving style in order to not pound the right rear tire
into oblivion and, at the same time, keep it from getting out of control well before tire life has
been reached!
After a few laps with the single setup change, I found myself obtaining a 55.970 for a best time.
I also found that
ed to consciously keep the rear from stepping out, or the right rear tire in particular from
overheating too early into the run. Not only did the car turn better, it turned too much, and any
advantage that I was personally gaining due to a better turn rate came at the expense of too
much opposite direction of travel input in order to maintain my comfort level. A loose race car is a
very unnerving thing, and, as they say, friends don’t let friends drive loose.
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